New books from Tami Hoag, Alafair Burke and debut novelist Ingrid Thoft will keep readers guessing until the very end

“The 9th Girl”

Tami Hoag

Dutton; 406 pages; $26.95

While the hunt for a serial killer usually is enough to fuel a gripping plot, the secondary story of teenage angst, bullying and neglectful parenting emerges as the richer, more intriguing tale in “The 9th Girl.”

Tami Hoag’s 19th novel briskly explores how the banality of evil can seep into domestic situations, upending families and forcing parents to second-guess their decisions. By contrast, the investigation of a serial killer with the media nickname Doc Holiday is increasingly pushed to the side and actually dilutes the more interesting story about out-of-control bullying.

In “The 9th Girl,” Hoag returns to her Minneapolis homicide cops Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska, whose last appearance was in “Prior Bad Act” in 2006. The popular detectives have been the protagonists in some of Hoag’s best novels, and “The 9th Girl” marks a near seamless return.

Sam and Nikki have been investigating a serial killer whose crimes are committed on or near a holiday in the tri-state area. His latest victim is a teenage girl whose body is discovered on New Year’s Eve. The teenager is identified as Penny Gray, who attends an exclusive private school and is a classmate of Nikki’s 15-year-old son, Kyle. While the private school offers excellent academics, it also is rife with bullies and cliques who make outcasts of students such as Kyle, who is on scholarship.

Hoag skillfully illustrates how teens can become alienated from their parents and how, in turn, parents can be ignorant of their children’s lives. During the case, Nikki re-evaluates her own parenting skills. Hoag’s strong storytelling soars when the detectives investigate the teen’s death, but the scenes with the serial killer undercut “The 9th Girl.”

Hoag delivers an evocative view of Minneapolis. The scenes of the freezing January will have even summer readers shivering.

“If You Were Here”

Alafair Burke

Harper; 368 pages; $25.99

A person’s disappearance haunts her family and friends for decades, especially when it seems the person vanished by choice. What causes people to decide to leave their lives, to leave behind everything — and everyone — that they once cherished?

Alafair Burke builds on that question in her suspenseful “If You Were Here.”

It’s been years since New York journalist McKenna Jordan thought of her friend Susan Hauptmann, a West Point grad who disappeared more than a decade ago. Since then, McKenna’s life has taken many turns: She is happily married with a new career writing for a magazine. But her once promising career with the district attorney’s office ended when she incorrectly accused a cop of planting a gun. McKenna’s sadness about her missing friend is reignited when she works on a story about a teenager rescued from subway tracks by a woman. The video footage is grainy, but McKenna believes that the heroine is her long-vanished friend Susan.

McKenna’s story takes a new twist as the search for Susan also leads back to the case and media blitz that caused her to leave the D.A.’s office in disgrace.